


on the front line

by finalizer



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon, [banging pots and pans together] i love to make these two suffer!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-09
Updated: 2016-03-09
Packaged: 2018-05-25 07:39:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6186214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/finalizer/pseuds/finalizer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ren wakes on the shuttle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	on the front line

**Author's Note:**

> friend: write angst  
> me: k

Ren wakes on the shuttle, screws his eyes back shut before forcing them open a second time. He’s on a bed — a cot, or so it feels. He’s covered with a blanket. There’s a low ceiling, the room spans a few feet across, and he realizes he’s not on the Finalizer.

He has no time to properly assess his surroundings before Hux’s voice cuts through the silence.

“Here I was, thinking you’d died in your sleep.”

There’s a smug note in his voice and it grates on Ren’s nerves even more than the low, incessant humming of the ship’s engine, permeating past his skull and straight to his nerve receptors — hypersensitivity brought on by injury; he remembers being injured. A flare of pain twists through his abdomen as he tries to push himself into an upright position.

Hux emerges from the cockpit and Ren stares: copper hair falling out of its regulation sweep, translucent skin making way for the dark bruises beneath his eyes. He hasn’t slept for a long time.

Ren fails to hold back a jab. “Were you worried?”

He’s surprised at how level his words come out, half expecting a sleep induced rasp to mar his voice.

The chasm, the scavenger standing over him, bright blood tainting the snow; the Starkiller shuddering in its death throes. He remembers, and his face twists into a scowl. The healing scar across his features screams in protest, and he remembers that, too — her final blow.

There’s a tremble in Hux’s hands, surprisingly ungloved, as he steps closer. It’s a heavy contrast to his steady gait. The conclusion — exhaustion; perhaps anxiety brought on by insomnia.

Hux stops at the foot of the cot. “Have you ever known me to worry?”

Blinking up at him, Ren manages to push himself upright, leans against the durasteel wall at his back. He doesn’t know the answer to Hux’s question. He’s not sure if he correctly recalls being dragged aboard an escape pod by frantic troopers, nor oddly enough Hux shedding his coat to subdue the shivers wracking Ren’s freezing body. He thinks it might all be a delusion.

He doesn’t reply, instead fixes his gaze on Hux’s hands, his nails digging bloody crescent shapes into his palms. Hux is anxious, he’s _afraid_.

Ren realizes he knows where they’re headed, and the dread sets in.

“Snoke asked you to accompany me?” he demands instead of voicing his concerns. “Just you? No one else is on board.”

Hux meets his eyes for a brief moment before tearing away, looking at a point on the wall just above Ren’s head. He’s putting his reply together in his mind, that much Ren can tell — crafting a speech, suffocating the tremor in his voice before it even makes it past his lips.

“Supreme Leader requested your presence and mine. You’re to complete your training.”

“And you?”

Hux looks back at him and the twisted smile that flashes across his face is manic, bitter and sardonic. Fear is not a look Ren would have ever expected him to wear.

“The medics had you put into an induced sleep,” Hux begins, ignoring Ren’s inquiry. He schools his expression and adopts the mask of exemplary impassiveness he’d spent his life perfecting. “You wouldn’t let anyone near you. Hypovolemic shock, they called it. I think you were purposefully being difficult.”

He concludes and absentmindedly tugs the corner of his jacket downwards, fixing a crease that isn’t there. It’s a drop out of character, a display of weakness that he only ever dares to show around Ren. Even then, it’s unintentional.

Unclenching his fists at his sides, he readies to turn back to the pilot’s seat. “It’s an estimated four standard hours to arrival. Convenient you finally woke. I won’t have to haul your unconscious body to the citadel.”

He spares one last look at Ren’s face. The scrutiny hangs heavy in the air, every drag of unnerving pale green eyes across marred flesh leaves Ren wanting to scamper away, hide beneath the heavy blanket like a frightened child. He wants to force himself back to sleep, if only to escape Hux’s perusal of him.

Ren almost misses the moment Hux snaps out of it and swerves on his heel, stepping away, back to the console. He watches him retreat, before dropping his gaze to his lap, to the blanket someone — _Hux_ — had draped over him as he slept. It brings about recognition, a fully conscious memory of Hux fussing over him as they departed from the shattering planet. He had draped the greatcoat over Ren’s shoulders, disregarding the onlookers’ confusion at his display of compassion.

Suddenly, Ren wants to know everything.

“What does Snoke want from you?”

Hux keeps his back turned, watching the expanse of stars outside the viewport. He’s standing behind the empty pilot’s seat, knuckles going white as his grip on it tightens. “I don’t know.”

There’s a lapse in judgement, though Ren never excelled in thinking his actions through in the first place, and he pushes himself to his feet, swaying only slightly as he uses the wall for balance.

“Then why are you afraid?”

Hux is impossibly still, curled in on himself as much as possible while remaining upright. “I’m not afraid.”

Ren shoves off the wall and stalks towards him. “You’re shaking.”

“ _Ren_.” The warning note in Hux’s voice stops him mere inches away. He thinks back on Hux’s earlier question and knows the answer — he has never known Hux to worry. Not like this, not visibly. Nothing a glass or two of exotic liquor couldn’t fix.

He resists touching Hux, knows that a comforting gesture would be synonymous with Hux’s lapse in control failing to go unnoticed. He doesn’t touch Hux, ever, outside of pressing bruises into his skin when they fuck.

Instead, “He won’t hurt you.”

Hux lifts his head but doesn’t turn. Ren keeps his distance.

“The base is gone,” Hux mutters. His voice comes as if from a distance, he’s watching himself from a faraway plane. “It’s my fault. I had the weapon charged — I should have considered the vulnerability of the oscillator in that moment. I should have known our defenses had been breached. I should have double checked. I brought this down on myself.”

“It wasn’t your doing.”

“I was in command. It was my responsibility and my failure alone.”

“You still are in command,” Ren corrects, instinctively, rather than to reassure.

Hux spins around then and glares up at Ren, huffing out a bitter, disbelieving laugh. His eyes are glazed over in a panic he’s still trying to disguise. “I should hope to be so lucky. Either that or he’ll demote me, strip me of my rank and toss me away. I’m replaceable. He’ll kill me, Ren.”

Where Hux expects hopelessness in his own voice there is only hard certainty — awareness of his actions and their aftermath, of the punishment he deserves and will be met with.

He barrels on before Ren can spit out whatever consoling words he thinks Hux wants to hear. He doesn’t want sympathy; not from Ren, not from anyone.

“This wasn’t a meager mistake, Ren, not a miscalculation. You — you don’t know what it’s like to watch everything you’ve ever worked for fall apart in an instant. A bright flash and every sleepless minute I devoted to the Order comes unraveled. _You have no idea._ You have no responsibilities like that, no duty to anyone. What _you_ do, you do for yourself. I had thousands under my command, now dead. I don’t deserve any less.”

“I won’t let him hurt you,” Ren insists.

Hux doesn’t — _can’t_ — stop himself from surging forward at Ren and shoving him away. Pitiful, he thinks. He’s acting out like the brat that stands before him. He’s so damn tired and the world is swimming before his eyes.

“Fuck you, Ren,” he spits, tries to conceal the tremor in his voice. “You should let him. I can take responsibility for my actions.”

Ren opens his mouth to retort, then seems to change his mind, and closes it again. He watches Hux’s chest heave and wonders if Hux remembers how to cry, if he’d allowed himself a single moment of vulnerability since he was a child.

“You said four hours to go,” he says, and Hux stares at him blankly. “You haven’t slept. You should — ” Ren trails off, titling his head in the direction of the cot he’d vacated. “For a while, at least.”

Hux doesn’t want to sleep, doesn’t want to shut his mind down and let the full impact of his failure slip past his lowered guards. He doesn’t want to wake up screaming.

“I have to watch the controls.”

“I know how to fly it,” Ren quickly insists, and Hux hears the unspoken admission, a chaotic medley of Ren’s thoughts: he’s his father’s son, and his father’s killer, he knows how to fly and he killed the man who taught him.

Hux closes his eyes in defeat. “Fine. Feel free to scuttle the ship. I don’t care.”

This time, Ren fails to refrain himself from reaching out and tugging Hux against him, pulling him into a tentative embrace. Hux palpably stills, but doesn’t try to tear himself away.

“Let me go, Ren,” he demands almost immediately, his voice muffled by Ren’s robes as his face presses against his chest. Ren’s arm merely tightens around Hux’s waist in response to the request.

“No,” he says, with finality, and waits for Hux to deflate.

“I hate you.”

“I know.”


End file.
